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Cut reams still coming in the back door – Pulp & Paper Edge

The practice of importing cut-price volume office paper under the ‘no country declared’ (NCD) provisions to mask paper imports arriving from regions with questionable pulp harvesting practices – notably Indonesia – is not only continuing, but rising, according to the latest issue of industry bible, Pulp & Paper Edge.

The previous decision by some of Australia’s largest office paper sellers to import cut-ream volumes under the NCD provisions immediately after announcing they would cease using Indonesian paper amid the local market’s environmental concerns coincided with a national spike in NCD imports, suggesting the Indonesian imports were continuing under a new guise.

This month’s issue of Pulp & Paper Edge, the industry’s foremost authority on paper trends, indicates that the volume of NCD continues to rise, and suggests that the continuing usage of the NCD provisions of the Census & Statistics Act 1905, negatively impacts the Australian paper market, particularly domestic producers.

The IndustryEdge Pulp & Paper Edge report states:

“As IndustryEdge has repeatedly commented, the continuation of imports under NCD arrangements is a deliberate attempt by one or more importers to hide Indonesian imports behind a veil of secrecy. Regardless of the reason for this secrecy, ultimately no good comes of it. The importer is always exposed and the trade prices can always be determined, though it takes longer than if transparency is applied.”

The report suggests that the use of NCD provisions could be due to the possibility that the importer is embarrassed about the source of their imports, or their competitively low prices points may be less than the cost of manufacture and they are attempting to hide what could be questionable pricing tactics.

With NCD prices typically being lower than the prices of the bulk Chinese imports that have taken over from the bulk imports from Indonesia, it is conceivable that the current NCD imports could be direct from Indonesia.

According to Pulp & Paper Edge, both the previous low priced Indonesian volumes hidden inside NCD and the current budget Chinese volumes are believed to have been imported for and by major branded organisations.

The concurrence of declining prices and increasing NCD for imported cut reams and the subsequent Chinese volumes are explored in depth in an IndustryEdge Special Report, which is available from www.industryedge.com.au/publications.php